Heckling the Coronation

During his first year in office, President Obama can be expected to unquestioningly acquiesce to the consensus demanding he oversee an increase in public debt twice as large, as a percentage of GDP, as any year in the Roosevelt administration. He will do this because, as any successful politician, he is congenitally incapable of recognizing, much less offering resistance to, the elite’s will to power (known to the benighted as bipartisan consensus). A fish cannot know it is wet, and a politician cannot be made aware of the recurring tendency of elite design to diverge too far from the common good, mostly because he cannot distinguish between the two.
The intent of this radical increase in public indebtedness is to somehow stave off the inevitable reckoning of the last two decades of imprudent public and (far more, of far less appreciated consequence) private borrowing, preserving the illusion that we can sustain a standard of living based on greed and the serial contrivances of speculative and, now, credit bubbles.
Even as the new president takes us to task for our irresponsibility and “cynicism,” he assures the gilded class among us that he’s quite prepared to defer onto your grandchildrens’ grandchildren the cost of propping up a system founded on irresponsibility, illusion and instant gratification. As much as it takes, apparently. Never accuse the new president of lacking nerve.

While citing the “lessons of the Great Depression”, the new administration will be taking out this mortgage on a nation no longer, as it was in the thirties, rich in the resource that was still only just becoming the key to global power and industrial might, oil; a nation poised to exploit vast stores of still unrealized industrial and human capital; a nation that would enter into a great war that would act as the ultimate stimulus program, bringing together all of these factors in one unified effort and leaving our global competition broke and broken. That nation was like a contained spring straining to expand. The spring has since sprung.

Now it is the elderly percentage of the population, the poor (whom we continue to import from abroad, lest we fall prey to “nativism” or “protectionism”) along with their attendant entitlements and social programs; now it is the cost of energy and food, that are poised for growth. Ours is a nation already drained by two unnecessary and unsustainable wars, that are weakening us relative to an increasingly resentful and disdainful world. Now it is a nation that doesn’t know how to deploy a massive stimulus, of corporations that employ as many or more abroad as they do at home and view any sense of allegiance to the nation that charters and protects them as a sacrilege; of governments and municipalities incapable of large projects due to a self-conflicted complex of regulations and patronage programs.

Since the imagined conservative rebirth of the “Reagan revolution,” we have been steadily selling off our industrial base in what Paul Craig Roberts aptly identifies as a system of labor arbitrage. This process is unguided by anything but aggregated greed, and for that reason its champions are probably correct about its inevitability. If it had a deliberate end it would be that the parceling out of our capacity to build things must be complete long before any near-equilibrium in global wages and production costs manifests a floor beneath this stomach-churning descent and thus ends its profitability. Our industrial base will end up somewhere, just not here. Perhaps at that point we will lure it back with our desperate willingness to work for starvation wages (brilliant!), provided of course our foreign friends have developed the keen distaste for “nationalism” and “protectionism” with which we are so selflessly blessed.

In conjunction with this halving of manufacturing’s share of GDP, we have doubled finance’s share of same. Like the imagined endless bounty to be found in treating a perfectly fine industrial capacity as if it’s the object of a salvage operation (akin to jumping out of a perfectly good airplane) to be parted out and liquidated, we’ve also bamboozled ourselves into believing in the infinite divisibility of money and confidence, in an inexhaustible fifth dimension of wealth to be mined moving money about–check that, the money need not move, nor even exist other than as digital 0s and 1s in our computer programs. Observing this remarkable displacement of the physical realm, one soon wonders why we don’t simply declare ourselves wealthier. Of course we’ve pretty much done just that.

But that declaration was really a loan application. The goods received for that loan abound: the exurbs were overextended and their now derelict far reaches stand shuttered, monuments to a different sort of failure of imagination–too much, not too little; the electronics still entrance us and dictate our daily lives; the massive plasma televisions still emit their comforting, hypnotizing glow, even from the humblest abodes; cinematic wonders produced by massive allocations of money, logistics and manpower–productions akin to small mercenary wars of plunder–still entrance us in theatres. Even the President makes a fetish of the dull convenience of his Blackberry, confident to the end in the transcendent efficacy of instant communications and the cool factor. Time to pay for all this stuff or default; there is no third way. Contrary to what we’re being told, deficits matter, more than ever.

The president was admirably sober in his inaugural address (prompting one acolyte to concede, “well, he’s not perfect”), calling for shared responsibility for the calamity upon us. Normally I’m all for us taking ourselves to task as a people, but it must be noted that now the powerful hector the common for doing precisely as instructed: borrowing and consuming. There has long been a consensus favoring consumption over saving, probably because those who gain access to the privileges of power by adopting the consensus, whatever it is, in the same way one once adopted the dominant religion, knew that this was the only politically feasible course of action. To be on the wrong side of this may have been far-sighted, but it was not politically advantageous or financially lucrative. Curiously, this state of affairs remains. But then that’s the problem with elite consensus, which I don’t pretend to have a substitute for, it’s a bit like a company’s management–their failure is the company’s failure. When they go, everything goes. Management does not resign en masse, and the elite doesn’t acknowledge its errors (or its existence).

Our elite has failed us. Don’t expect that to be featured in the official proclamations. Whose “dogma” (to use the phrase that President Obama, in one of his brilliant ironic turns, used to stigmatize his political opposition simultaneous with a call to unity) was it that declared profligacy a virtue and thrift a vice, after all? How sophisticated did the elite expect (or want) a forklift driver in Tennessee to be about finance or monetary policy? Has he, derided as fat and lazy and unfit for the global economy by people whose highest aspiration is to one day read from a teleprompter while presenting television audiences with an inoffensive visage, worked less for more? No; he’s worked more and gone further into debt for less.

Still, the last sanctioned form of bigotry, that against him (provided he’s white, and a he, of course) will be the redoubt sought by our desperate ruling caste. Someone will be blamed for the coming degradation in our prospects and standard of living. In another time it might have been minorities and immigrants. We always make the mistake of fighting the current war as the last, thus the endless evocations of the Great Depression now. Likewise, some will compel us to tilt at the windmill of a racial, fascist reaction. Some of them will be deluded; others will merely be resourceful.

And resourceful they have been. At some point it became something of a scandal to be too white; maybe it was when a photo of three firefighters at Ground Zero made a perfect image to be cast in bronze but for their inconvenient accuracy as a racial sampling of the fallen. The diverse racial makeup of the new first family is proclaimed the new standard, and we are cued to shudder at the thought of reverting to our dismal past.
This declaration of a new model of superiority would be more bearable if it wasn’t just (in its least destructive aspect) one more impingement on merit; but the reality that it marks out for exclusion the majority of families in this country (for being insufficiently integrated, though I’m certain we’re not about to begin calling groups to task for being uniformly non-white) seems not merely bigoted (which it very much is) but mad. I’m just retrograde enough to cling to that quaint notion of equality that has been so much bandied about during this week’s festivities, just so lacking in sophistication to get the impression the references now to color of skin and content of character mean precisely the opposite of the words expressed.

But that noble ideal, having been too long useful to the corrupt, too often resorted to by the craven, has, in a remarkably similar fashion, been as devalued through overindulgent minting as our monetary currency. It’s now as cheaply produced and disposable as those “collectible” Obama coins and plates we see advertised on television (and made in China).

But there is more than absurdity here. There is also the deliberate stoking of fear and anger; the purposeful manipulation of white neurosis and black grievance, all so a man, and his attendant factional allies, can gain power claiming an almost superstitious capacity to allay these things (to “heal”). An act (in the theatrical sense) of dubious legitimacy and responsibility. This is the sinister underside to the mass reverie (and there’s always a sinister underside to mass reverie) about President Obama’s “historic” ascension. This is the leer beneath his already iconic smile. But, if your conditioning against crimethink hasn’t already caused you to reject me out of hand for somehow wandering into the political minefield of race, this brings us to the second contradiction in the president’s inaugural address for which I will, next time we meet, offer one last lonely jeer lost amidst the adulatory crowd–his avowal to unencumber science in public policy.

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7 Responses to Heckling the Coronation

While it’s a little tough trying to sum up your point here Mr. Dale, nevertheless in both its details and in its apparent overall thrust I think there are some point to be made.

Firstly, as to what seems its most damning detail, you wrote:

“There is also the deliberate stoking of fear and anger; the purposeful manipulation of white neurosis and black grievance …. This is the leer beneath his already iconic smile.”

But nowhere in your rather bleak and multi-dimensional denunciation of Obama did I at least see even one word of his cited to support this charge.

And as regards your comment’s more general thrust, okay, it seems fair to agree that his economics to date have been those of the governmental elites in terms of profligate public spending, but what evidence if there of any worse than, say, George Bush and his party’s war or prescription medication plan? Or worse than Ted Stevens and all the other Republican pork-barrelers?

And how exactly is his announced intention to continue with the present bailout program (albeit with some undefined changes) and institute a new stimulus program all that different from what Bush did?

Moreover of course it appears that it really isn’t *public* debt that’s brought us to this crisis at all. It’s been *private* debt, and under whose watch has this happened? So even speaking generally under whose party has the regulation all these financial speculators been the most scorned and spurned? Mr. Bush’s, not Mr. Mr. Obama’s. And whose party is the one more known for the favoring of regulation? The latter’s, of course.

And yet on the other hand whose party has mustered more opposition to what’s been so conventionally called “free trade” such as contained in the NAFTA treaty and etc.? Seems to me it’s been the Democrats who have had at least some members trying at least some times with some subjects to pierce the hypnotic veil of that phrase and insist—like Pat Buchanan—that some *other* measures such as fairness ought to be insisted upon as well so that we don’t flush our old industries down the toilet.

Do I dislike highly activist governmental involvement in the private sector? Yes. But I think what’s happened has moved the chains of the economic debate. Or perhaps to use a more accurate metaphor, it has shifted the very tectonic plates underlying same.

Who now really wants to go to bat for the giants of the private sector and argue how much more responsible they are than government? How much more astute they are? How there’s no argument against the dangers of governmental “over-regulation” because “under-regulation” can only lead to this or that little problem or this or that sole company having problems?

Or, to put it on a grander scale, it was one thing before to decry the admittedly huge inefficiencies of “socialism” or “socialist”-type measures when it seemed that the alternative thereto was the efficiency of free-markets marred only by the uneveness of their benefits. But what about now when the free-market alternative to the inefficiency of socialism includes possible catastrophe? Given how extreme and scary the present situation is do you really thing that Limbaugh and his ilk are right that calling Obama a “socialist” is even scarier? Indeed, didn’t they already lose that bet in the election?

To an even greater degree than Bush has ravaged the Republican/conservative brand our capitalists have destroyed the amazing level of trust the public had in them before to at least not be crazy. And that’s saying something.

It’s a new world economically I think. Almost totally new because what arguments against almost any proposed governmental action aren’t going to seem simply laughable in the face of what’s happened? That it’s somehow immoral or wrong to tax or otherwise diminish or encumber the sacred profits of American business? Those same gigantic businesses of today that are awash in their own irresponsibility and who are sitting with their gigantic maws open gorging on untold billions of slugs of money from the taxpayers? That it’s wrong for government to be “redistributionist” when Mr. Bush and the Republicans are the ones who almost literally have run fire-hoses of money out the doors of the Treasury and the wallets of the taxpayers down the gullets of the executives at Goldman-Sachs and AIG and Citibank and so forth and so on?

It’s a new day I think, and if non-liberals or Leftists want to say anything on economic subjects and not be laughed at they need to start thinking differently. Something different than their old refrain that regulations hurt business at least, and perhaps instead suggesting some *smarter* kinds of regulations.

For instance instead of all these “process” regulations which have so totally failed what about a simple regulation giving someone (the Fed?) the power to henceforth simply declare that an economic concern is getting too big to fail without endangering the entire U.S. economic system and that it must stop its growth or divest itself of some of its portions or etc.? If after all businesses want to be as free as possible of “process” regulations well then what’s wrong with the public insisting that in exchange for same that they don’t get so large that they can then essentially blackmail us into saving them when they indulge in the kind of grotesque stupidities we now know they are so capable of doing? What possible objection to this can they have in the face of what’s going on now?

I think I’m as rock-ribbed a believer in capitalism as anyone, but that doesn’t make me blind from seeing that the fundamental terms of the economic debate have just shifted forever. And if I’m right the question then is who is going to get ahead of the curve on this change, and who is going to make themselves seem irrelevant by trying to deny it?

It seems we have a problem with comments going missing again, in this case the first response. My apologies to the reader.
As for TomB’s comment above: I make no distinctions between Obama’s and Bush’s economic philosophy, because I think there is very little, which was rather the point of my admittedly narrow conception of an “elite.”

I do intend to take time at some point to praise President Obama’s intent to dismantle the worst of Bush’s foreign policy and civil liberties excesses. But as for economics, neither of these men has the wherewithal to conceive of a significant change, much less the political freedom of movement to institute one.

Other than your mistaken impression that I’m contrasting Obama with Bush or Limbaugh (may the name never darken this blog again), or defending the corporatism that has recently passed for free market ideology, nothing in your commentary contradicts what I’ve written here.

As for Barack Obama’s demagogy, read the Rev. Wright’s speeches (quite entertaining), read the president’s books (less so) and read the text of his grand speech on race, the utter vacuity of which was only punctuated by the one clear point made therein: slavery is America’s “original sin”, therefore black Americans will not only always hold a greivance against her, they are morally bound to it.

The converse of this is that each white American forever carries the cardinal sin of slavery. We’re angry and we’re always going to be angry; you’re guilty and you’re always going to be guilty.
This is demagogy, not “unity.” It is furthermore founded upon a lie; the lie being that a black American is unfortunate to be born an American, when in fact he is blessed by the circumstance, for the unique opportunity and freedom it affords him. That this is the result of a historical sin does not lessen that; it is merely one more of history’s morally confounding random twists.

But this is only the beginning. There is a more immediate lie with far more immediate and tangible consequences: the lie that black economic underacheivement is the result of white racism. Barack Obama’s entire career has been devoted to exploiting and perpetuating this misconception. That’s for another long, rambling post.

But above all, collective guilt is a tyrannical lie that brings power to the few, strife among the many and, if too long exploited, bloodshed. That it is widely accepted does not change that. Shame on President Obama and the whole corrupt consensus that holds this appalling, primitive notion self evident.

Okay, your response nicely breaks down your theses so far as I can see into these two separate propositions:

A.) That Obama’s/the Dem’s economics have been as bad as the Republicans and Bush’s.

B. Essentially, that Obama is a race warrior.

Again as to A. I’d say not, and again if for no other reason than it has been the Democrats who it turns out were more right as to the need for vigorous regulation of things and that, along with Buchanan for instance, they have not so fully fallen under the spell of the words “free trade” no matter what.

And as to B. I note once again that despite his not insignificant amount of time in public life now you still are unable to cite anything from the lips of Obama themselves supporting your point.

Yes I agree there’s the circumstantial evidence that the waters he sprung from and swam in are polluted with the kind of racialist thinking you note. But it’s still only circumstantial, which is seemingly contradicted by great masses of the direct.

Put it this way, even if one could come up with some racialist-type comments Obama made when he was a “community organizer” or etc. I think one would have to grant that politicians and budding politicians are always prone to saying what their constituencies want; that people get carried away; that it would be unfair to hold anyone to every offhand comment they made; every comment or thought they had when they were young; every comment made in the course of casual talking, and etc., and so forth.

And yet here I at least haven’t really even seen any such “non-serious” comments attributable to Mr. Obama, which I admit surprised me given his waters and given that one can hardly expect that he always knew he was going to be in the Presidential spotlight some day.

And then there’s any number of things to the contrary he’s said while he *has* been in the spotlight and campaigning. Seems to me if anything in his major speeches he’s gone out of his way to distance himself from being a fundamental racialist. And then look too at when it was in his interest to portray himself as one: E.g., when he was still so unknown and Hillary was still collecting the vast majority of the African-American votes. Did he go onto some racialist pandering spree? Pretty clearly not it seems to me, not even to any degree that I know of. And think of how significant that would seem to be.

Forget being fair to public figures, it seems to me just in terms of trying to get history right that in assessing them that you have to look at what they have done or said when things were *serious*. When it wasn’t just little offhand actions or statements concerning something but big actions and serious speeches. And so far at least since he’s not had any chance to do anything yet I think Obama’s serious, deliberate words about race so far have been about as anodyne as possible. Seriously, deliberatively so. And indeed amazingly so not only given the political environment he sprung from and swam in, but also in contrast to the kinds of racialist talk that damn near every other African-American in public life today feels they are obligated to utter.

Thus, all I’m really saying is this: Given the kind of racial politics and rhetoric that’s so common today, wouldn’t you admit that Mr. Obama hasn’t just been *relatively* innocent of same, but indeed has been freer of same than absolutely every other Democratic alternative would have been? Including all the white ones too?

I do, and think it’s pretty amazing. Surprising too because of all that circumstantial evidence you note that for a long time had me suspecting exactly what you do. But then I watched and listened pretty hard and … I’ll be damned; if anything I suspect the guy feels that there’s been too *much* racialism that’s gone on a la that brilliant, brave McWhorter fellow. And at any rate the direct evidence just simply hasn’t been there to the opposite so all I can say is … let’s keep our fingers crossed, no?

WRW:
Thank you, but no. Ours is a demand-side, not supply-side problem. You just need to take a lot of e and keep a water bottle handy. Criticisms of style are gratefully recieved, respectfully taken into consideration and, always as a matter of principle, returned with colorful suggestions as to their further handling scrawled in the margins. For a clean version of such a suggestion: Instapundit is one google search away. Short, if not particularly sweet, and always intellectually and endurance tax-free.

All in good fun.

And if you think the post is a bit much, I just re-edited that comment about six times. Seven. I really need to meet someone.